Just as I was beginning to wonder if mucking out stalls was a form of torture meant to wear me down into compliance, the aunts declared the barn “clean” and led us back into the house to get cleaned up. I did my best to get Minnie into the shower ahead of me so I could have a chance to ask my questions but Martha pushed me into the other bathroom.
I couldn’t stay mad at her for long, not with all her rose scented soaps and fluffy towels.
Leaving the bathroom with a wet head was a bad idea. The house was freezing.
“It always this cold in here?” I asked Martha in the kitchen. I rubbed my arms to warm them up.
She smiled apologetically. “It’s a pretty old house, it gets drafty.” She disappeared and returned with a mauve cardigan. “I knitted it myself,” she said shyly.
Of course you did, I thought. What I said was, “It’s pretty, thanks.”
Martha left again to build a fire in the fireplace and I stood at the window in the kitchen, waiting for everyone to come down. The wind had picked up while I was in the shower but this time actual snow was falling. It wasn’t the gentle fluffy flakes that I was used to but rather sharp, glinting flakes that cracked against the windows. The sky was darkening quickly and to my surprise the ugly cat clock on the wall showed it was only four o’clock even though it had felt like I’d been in that smelly barn for an eternity.
The aunts came into the kitchen whispering furiously. Minnie was nowhere in sight.
“Quick,” I hissed, rushing over to them. “Tell me what the curse is—”
Hazel shushed me. “Not now.”
Viola said quietly, “I think she may know sooner than we think.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked, more frustrated than ever.
Hazel shushed me, her eyes darting to the stairway Minnie and Martha were noisily making their way down. She waited until the girls were in the kitchen before saying, “Oh good, we’re all here. Your aunt and I were thinking we should do an early dinner tonight, what with the storm coming in. We’ll probably lose power like we always do, so best to be done with everything before it happens.”
We worked together to get dinner made and in the oven. There was no camaraderie or joking like there had been the night before. The aunts left in a hurry to “check on things” and Martha was tense and silent. Minnie tried to pull her out of her shell and finally fell silent herself. I could tell her feelings were hurt but I was preoccupied. Something was very wrong.
The aunts came back into the kitchen to help set the table and each plate they set down rattled for a second as they laid it down. From across the room I could see how badly their hands were shaking.
Minnie and I watched, growing more and more puzzled. “You guys expecting a major storm or something?” Minnie finally asked.
“You never know—” Viola said, right atop Hazel.
“—better safe than sorry.”
I turned to Martha for a real explanation but her huge shining eyes and milk white face stopped me from asking. She looked terrified.
Dinner was tense. Martha stared at her plate and didn’t eat a bite. The aunts wolfed their food down, tossed their dishes in the sink and began emptying the cupboards of candles and boxes of matches. Minnie and I ate in silence and exchanged worried glances. I had been through winter storms in Michigan before. Maybe because they were out in the middle of nowhere they lost electricity more and it took longer to get restored. But that sounded hollow in my own mind and didn’t explain why Martha looked so panicked.
As I washed dishes, I watched everyone’s reflection in the darkening window. Martha’s shoulders were hunched and her corn silk hair was curtaining her face. Occasionally one of the aunts would whisper something in her ear as they passed her by in rush to collect candles or stacks of old newspapers.
An electric web of lightning cracked through the whole sky, lighting up the entire yard. Martha let out an unearthly wail and Minnie began crying. I blinked furiously, trying to get my sight back.
“Bixby, Minnie, you two girls go up to bed. If the storm comes it comes, we’ll be just fine in here,” one of the aunts snapped. Her comforting words were at odd with her tone and furrowed eyebrows.
I took a long look at Martha and her pinched face and shaking hands. “Martha—”
“Martha will be fine, she just doesn’t like storms. Now get upstairs,” Viola snapped.
I stared her down, opening my mouth to demand an explanation, to know what had Martha so frightened. From behind her Hazel shook her head gently and mouthed “later.” As she put her arm around Martha’s shoulder I thought I heard her whisper, “You can’t know it will be you this time, honey; it’ll be okay.”
Minnie grabbed my hand and dragged me upstairs. She burst into the bedroom winded and wild eyed. “Do you really think the storm will be that bad?” she asked.
“I don’t think so, it’s just a bad snowstorm,” I said, pulling my clothes off and leaving them in a heap on the floor. My old lady nightgown was a little thin so I put the cardigan back on over it.
“Then why was it lightning?” She stood in the middle of the room, still clothed, biting her lip.
“Are you afraid of storms?”
She nodded.
“Not snowstorms?”
She shook her head.
“Just lightning?”
She nodded. “Since I was a little kid.”
“Didn’t your parents tell you it was just God putting on a light show?” I teased.
She gave me a flat look. “No. My dad just told me to piss off and I would spend the rest of the storm hiding under my bed.”
I groaned and squeezed my eyes shut. “I’m sorry, Minnie, I wasn’t thinking. Why don’t you push your bed up against mine tonight?”
She smiled and changed quickly. It took both of us to shove her wrought iron bed over to mine. The wind whipped around the corners of the house, whistling hollowly in our room. It was knocking the big mercury lights mounted on the side of the barn around causing shadows of swirling snow to bounce all over our ceiling. The pings and cracks of the icy flakes against our windows only added to the cacophony of the storm.
Minnie wiggled under her cover and butted up next to me. As I wondered how she would fall asleep in all the din of the storm I heard her soft snores start. I smiled to myself and wondered how long it would take me to fall asleep.
I was poked in the ribs and my eyes flew open. Abe peered at me. Behind him the store was dark. “Bixby, what are you doing here?”
I shook my head, a little disoriented and grabbed onto the display case. “What do you mean, I thought I was supposed to be here every night.”
“Not tonight!” he cried. “Wake up!”
The weird storm and the unknown curse and Martha’s inexplicable fear came rushing to the front of my mind. “Abe, what’s going on?”
“You need to get back there,” he said and grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me.
“For what?” I asked, starting to panic.
“Bixby, wake up,” he yelled in my face but his voice was already fading and the noise of the storm was taking over.
I jerked awake, everything in the room standing out in eerie detail. The snow and wind slamming against the windows across from me ceased but continued on the side of the house. I crept out of bed, careful not wake my snoring friend, and made my way to the window overlooking the front of the house. I looked down on the stillness of the storm and was overcome with déjà vu. I had done this before, when Grandma was taken, when I was locked up.
I held my breath and forced myself to step in front of the window and look down. A globe of calm took up the space in front of the house and it was moving. In the center of it was a girl.
Chapter Ten
I slammed down the stairs, my heels
drumming against the bare wood.
“Hazel,” I wheezed out, praying they wouldn’t open the front door. “Hazel, don’t open the door!”
I whipped around the corner in the kitchen, ran through the dining and into the living room. Hazel, Viola and Martha all sat rigidly in armchairs.
“There’s somebody outside,” I said, still trying to catch my breath. “I think it’s a jinn.”
Viola snapped her head up to stare at me. “Of course she is. How do you know that?”
“Who else would it be?” I snapped back. “What does she want?”
Martha sniffed and raised her tearstained eyes to mine. “Me,” she said sadly.
I looked from Martha to the aunts and back. One hollow footstep rang out on the porch.
“Why you?” I asked hurriedly. “This is part of the curse, right? Wait, Martha, what do you have to do with it?”
Martha pulled a sleeve across her eyes. “Not me, any of us. They just come and steal us away, one a time.”
My heart froze. “What? Why?”
Another hollow footstep rang out and I could see Martha’s panic increase tenfold.
“Why do they want us?” I cried. “Hurry up and tell me!”
Hazel finally burst out. “When our ancestor escaped that horrible jinni she infuriated him. In his anger he cursed her bloodlines, swearing he would find her again in one of her children’s children and they would be together.”
Another footstep rang out.
“Hurry up,” I rushed her, rolling my hands around to keep her talking. “So what’s the curse? Why is she here?”
Viola spoke up this time, speaking quickly. “This girl comes to a descendent every few months and takes her. All we know is the girl they take is bound with silver bracelets that shine with chains of smoke and she is kept long enough to determine if she’s the match of our original ancestor.”
I forced my mind to focus even as I heard the heavy footsteps come across the porch to the front door.
“So she could be here for either one of us.”
Hazel shook her head. “Maybe, but probably not. Miriam, the original, was a blonde.” More quietly she said, “That girl almost always takes blondes.”
The doorknob twisted in the weak light of the lamp and we all shied away. It opened slowly and the silent crackling of the lightning outlined the slim shape of a young woman. She stepped in the doorway and I could make out her features.
She looked surprisingly like Ash but younger and with blank, white eyes. She turned towards Martha but I couldn’t tell if she was actually looking at her or if she could even see anything at all. “Are you ready?” she boomed.
Martha let a ragged sob loose and sagged against Hazel.
“It’s all right,” she murmured in her ear. “It will be okay.” I doubted Martha could hear her over her sobbing.
My heart caught in my throat and I knew what I had to do. “Martha,” I said. She was oblivious in her despair and fear. “Martha!” I said again, grabbing her by the shoulders.
She looked up at me finally, her eyes a red mess.
“You have to promise to look after Minnie,” I said.
“What?” Martha and Hazel asked at the same time.
I swallowed around the dry lump in my throat and squared my shoulders. “She doesn’t really belong here but please watch out for her. She’s my only—well, first friend.”
“What are you saying?” Martha whispered.
I turned toward the Ash lookalike. “I’m a Gatekeeper. I’ll go with you.”
My skin crawled as her blank face turned towards mine but I couldn’t trace her completely colorless eyes. She beckoned me forward and Viola jumped to her feet.
“What are you doing?” she hissed.
I shrugged, refusing to show my fear. “I’m going instead of Martha.”
Viola looked from me to Martha and leaned in to whisper in my ear, “She will take you back to their lair and chain you like a dog.”
I couldn’t believe she would leave Martha to a fate like that. But I knew what it entailed. I looked past her towards the strange girl. “It’s okay. I’ve gotten out of it once before, I can get out of it again.”
“Come then,” the girl’s voice boomed out unnaturally.
I looked at each of the women in the room, all looking back at me in unmasked horror. “It’s okay,” I weakly tried to assure them as I followed the strange girl, or jinn, out the front door.
Hazel hurriedly threw a heavy coat over my shoulders and pulled a wool cap down over my head. A ragged sob broke from her chest. “They never come back, Bixby, never.”
I wanted to promise her that I would but there was no more time. The girl was out on the porch and starting down the stairs. I could already see the bubble protecting her from the storm extending out from under the porch and felt myself gently pulled along. It seemed I was going to be trapped in that bubble with her.
My mouth dried as I began to wonder how long it would take to get wherever we were going. Would I fall asleep? That was how I had always gotten to Jordan. I wondered if he had anything to do with my new predicament and decided that maybe for once he didn’t.
Neither snow nor wind penetrated the bubble around the strange girl and me but neither did it disturb the snow already on the ground. I watched her back as I silently followed and took in her woolen coat and long strawberry blonde braid. She said nothing, didn’t even look back to see if I was following. I tested my theory about the bubble and stopped walking. Sure enough when the girl got a few paces out I was gently pushed from behind and my legs could not resist. I ground my teeth, eager to get where we were going so I could let yet another jinn know I wasn’t some toy to play with, some pet to chain up.
I followed the girl all the way to the back of the property and into a narrow trail between the tightly packed trees I hadn’t noticed before. If the storm was calming I couldn’t tell. Dark trees pressed in and down on us and all I could hear was the crunching of our feet over the frozen ground.
“So how long do we walk?” I asked after we had been in the woods for at least a half an hour.
She didn’t respond. I sighed and wished I had taken a minute to put socks on before shoving my feet into shoes. Not that I had had much warning.
The woods imperceptibly began to thin. It didn’t get lighter as the storm wasn’t over but snowflakes gradually began to find enough space between gnarled trees to fall just above our heads before sliding away.
Nervousness and nausea clenched my stomach. I didn’t know how I knew, but we were getting close. For all of my anger and determination to save Martha, I had no idea what I was up against and no plan how to get out of it.
The girl didn’t answer but I had no choice but to continue trailing behind.
As the forest cleared I began to get lightheaded. Lights began bursting in tiny pinpricks between the limbs of the ugly trees and for a moment I thought I was getting ready to pass out. But it was real light, not a trick of my mind and finally we stepped through the last of bare trees.
A gaping, snow dusted lawn stretched out to every horizon and far out in front of me, perched on the very edge, was a castle. Lights not unlike decorative street lamps lit a very wide path up to and surrounding the stone building. The lights illuminated everything in a dark and solemn glow. Even the rounded turrets and built-in terraces could not cheer the place up. I expected a moat and was disappointed, but garden beds stretched up and out and surrounded the place in a failed attempt to soften the exterior of the palace. It wasn’t that it was foreboding or creepy, it was just sad. Dark and sad.
The girl led me straight to the thick beamed and barred doors in the center of the front and they opened of their own accord for her.
I warily followed her into a small rounded entry. We
took several steps down into a large great room. It stretched easily half the width the building had appeared from the outside and a pair of twirling, stone stairs decorated each end. An open walkway a story up spanned the entire wall across from me and the ceiling was again twice that height. But directly in front of me was a wide, darkened doorway and that is where I couldn’t help but return my gaze too. I was so focused on that I ran into the girl who had stopped short.
“My lord,” she boomed out, “may I present your lady.”
I peered into the darkness she addressed and saw no one but heard a faint sigh. My eyes strained but still I almost didn’t notice the face emerging from the darkness.
“Thank you, Emma,” a deep, gentle voice said, carried out from the doorway. The owner walked out further into the light. He was nearly as large as David and shared the same haunting, alien features of David and Jordan both, but his hair was golden and twirled almost to his wide shoulders. Despite how large his eyes were and the eerie glow from them, I couldn’t tell if they were green or blue. He could have been handsome but there was nothing joyful, nothing kind about him. He seemed as cold as the building that housed him.
She in no way acknowledged him, just floated past through the doorway he had come from. The doors behind me slammed closed and I jumped, too late to see the hand that had shut them. When I turned back around he was right in front of me. “You know why you’re here?” he asked, he voice barely a whisper.
I took a deep breath and let my temper take control—better than bursting into frightened tears. “Of course I do,” I snapped.
His eyebrows raised a fraction of an inch. “They don’t always know why they are here.”
Winter's Dream (The Hemlock Bay Series) Page 9